Tuesday 26 November 2013 11.04 EST
First published on Tuesday 26 November 2013 11.04 EST

A"joke" candidate was elected president of the student union at Oxford University last week. Louis Trup, who said students should vote for him because he wears flip-flops, now represents 22,000 students.

Russell Brand's recent critique of British politics went straight for the jugular. He argued that the political system was broken as evidenced by the refusal of young people to engage with it. The solution: keep breaking it and build a new system. These student elections suggest that he is only half right. The system is broken, not because it fails to meet our needs, but because of the sort of people it attracts.

Our generation desperately wants to engage in politics, but we will only do so when the people hoping to represent us actually reflect our character. David Cameron, Ed Milliband, and their colleagues who greedily eye the top jobs, are all of the same breed. They get a kick out of the intrigue, the machinations, and the power of politics. What they are less interested in is people. When Michael Gove and Tristram Hunt banter about the the new English GCSE syllabus, they manifestly do so without actual children in mind. Russell Brand is the polar opposite of these cold political machines and is exactly the sort of person who would reinvigorate our democracy. The system may be broken, but it is not beyond repair.

It is easy to dismiss votes for joke candidates as protest votes. But unlike the recent surge in support for UKIP, nobody here is protesting against a particular policy. They are fed up with a personality type. Therefore this is not something that will go away with a consultation.

Policies are important, but they are useless if nobody can be bothered to listen to the person presenting them. Boris Johnson is such a powerful weapon in the Conservatives' arsenal because he is able to succeed where Cameron fails: he entices us to listen by virtue of having a personality. Even when we don't like what he has to say, we still engage with him. The jokes that joke candidates deploy work because they are suggest a sense of humour, a desire to make people laugh, a personality.

Democracies need to be representative of the population they seek to govern. In Britain this means having more women and ethnic minorities in parliament. But that is not enough. More of a certain gender or race will not engage young voters. Candidates must also be representative of our character and personality. For this new generation, character is king.

The major political parties need to recognise that to engage with young voters and attract our votes, we need to see more Brands and Borises.

Parties should take note of what is happening on campuses all over the country. There are lessons to be learned about how future elections will be lost or won. Our generation is interested in politics. We want to vote. Just give us someone to vote for.